We’re back! On Monday I invited a new crew (with some familiar faces) of Petits Chefs into the science lab for another term of cooking club. We’ve got a really wonderful lineup of guest chefs coming in to work with the boys and a couple of field trips planned as well – it’s going to be a great term!

For our first session, I chose a relatively easy recipe from Jamie Oliver’s upcoming book Super Food Family Classics (out here in Canada on October 4th but I ordered mine in July from the UK because 1. I couldn’t wait all those extra months and 2. I wanted a book with metric measurements!). I’ve really been enjoying the recipes from this book and was eager to try some of the recipes with the boys.

I always like to start the term with a recipe I know they will love (so, something with bacon or a pasta dish!) and this week, I chose Jamie’s 7-veg tomato sauce packed with hidden goodness (aka lots of vegetables!). I really like this recipe because it’s one you can take some shortcuts with to get this finished in around an hour AND it “looks just like regular tomato sauce” (only with hidden veg!).

The shortcut we took was to chop the vegetables roughly and finish chopping them finely in the food processor. Later in the term we will work on knife skills but as I feel like I want to encourage kids to get in the kitchen, using a food processor to get most of the work done fast makes this recipe a lot more appealing 😉 We did chat about how long it would have taken to chop all those veggies nice and small and decided it was “a very long time” 😉

We’re in a completely redesigned science lab now (hence the utter lack of photos – it’s going to take me a while to get used the the new smaller space and everything being completely different – I spent most of the session figuring out what should go where, from the hotplates to the boys’ stations. Still, less photos clearly means lots of action, right?) and we’re all learning our way around so having all the mise en place done relatively quickly meant that later in the session (when we realised that you cannot plug in more than one hotplate at each station, despite there being four plugs) when the hotplates decided to stop cooking after a while, we still had time to get the recipe done.

We used carrots, zucchini, cauliflower, peppers, garlic, onion, celery, leeks and canned tomatoes for our version of the sauce. I know the boys were skeptical as it was cooking (“so many vegetables!”) but as soon as we added the last cans of tomatoes and blitzed the sauce in the food processor again, they perked up at the sight of a more recognizable sauce 😉 In fact they couldn’t wait to get their hands on their jars!

All packed up and ready to go home:

I didn’t get to try this but it’s on my list to make a big batch over the weekend. Love how easily it comes together and how it packs such a great veggie punch! Stay tuned – next week we’ll cook up another recipe from Super Food Family Classics

Purchase Super Food Family Classics for yourselves on Amazon (this link should bring you to the Amazon store closest to you) Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository.

Please note: The product links from Amazon and The Book Depository are affiliate links, meaning if you click over and purchase something, I will receive a very small percentage of the purchase price (at no extra cost to you) which goes towards maintaining eat. live. travel. write. Thank you in advance!

The remark about ‘so many veggies’ recalls the TV ad down under many years ago.
Mum is serving up dinner to less-than-happy youngster who asks: “What’s the green stuff?”
If you can find a way to make the ‘green stuff’ appetising (as this soup appears to have done), parents will be eternally grateful. Nice post.